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Regulators in the US and Europe have moved closer to agreeing on the key issues for a new financial landscape, although they are still under pressure to finalise a co-ordinated action plan before the G20 meeting on April 2, according to a prominent oversight expert.

Barbara Matthews, founder of regulatory consultancy BCM International Regulatory Analytics, said that there was now a "conceptual convergence" among the finance ministers of Europe and the US on how regulation should be shaped.

Finance ministers are hoping to hammer out a global agreement on how best to tackle the ongoing effects of the credit crisis at the G20 meeting in April, although co-ordinated plans had been hampered by differing European and US strategies.

These differences include the approach to interest rates, where the UK dramatically lowered interest rates to a record 1%, while the European Central Bank delayed reducing rates, with the figure now at 2%. In the US, interest rates have been cut to almost zero.

But Matthews said that the differences have narrowed - and that principles are nearly agreed. Speaking at a roundtable on proposals for financial stability, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, Matthews said: "Principles are going to be very important, because there are just too many countries to sit down and agree on the nitty-gritty details."

Matthews is a former senior consel to the House Financial Services Committee in the US and a former Treasury Department attaché to the European Union.

She said the conceptual convergence centred around the construction of the bailout, where both the US and Europe were focused on insurance wrap-arounds; a restructuring of the funding landscape; and the possibility of a toxic-asset fund, such as an aggregator bank.

Other areas of convergence included a new focus on the effectiveness of fair value accounting, the need for the central clearing of derivatives, the removal of credit rating agencies from the Basel II framework, and the need to open up the discussion table to more global players. A final area of convergence is the rise of cash collateralised lending, she said.

The comments come at the beginning of what is expected to be two months of regular meeting between European finance ministers and various US government bodies to discuss creating a new regulatory framework.

On Monday, ministers from the euro-zone met up to discuss the economic situation, while yesterday finance ministers in the wider Economic and Finance Ministers Council (Ecofin) also held a meeting. An emergency meeting of EU finance ministers is also set to be arranged before the end of the month, according to a spokesman for the European Council.

On February 25, Jacques de Larosière will publish his report listing recommendations for how the European Commission should take regulation in the region forward. Just two weeks later on March 4-5, Eurogroup and Ecofin will meet again for the last time prior to the G20 meeting on April 2.

In the US, Barney Frank, chairman of the financial services committee in the House of Representatives, is expected to undertake his own work in formulating a cohesive action plan in time for the G20 meeting.

German newspaper Handelsblatt today reported that the G20 already has broad consensus on four key areas. These include a bigger role for the Financial Stability Forum, harsher treatment of countries that refuse to cooperate over tax evasion, and an increase in the number of the so-called "colleges of supervisors" to 35 from 20. Work is also expected to focus on the pro-cyclicality of capital ratio requirements.